


Bared

by Thursgay



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Brief and vague mentions of gore, F/M, levihan - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-22
Updated: 2015-08-22
Packaged: 2018-04-16 17:01:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4633158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thursgay/pseuds/Thursgay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The mission fails. But they're still there; barely together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bared

She comes to him covered in grime, covered in blood and some congealing sort of pus that lines the ridges of her body and drags her down beneath its filth. The blood is human and it stains her. The weight of it has washed her smile away.

His frown is heavy when he first lays his hands on her. 

Spine steeled, the stance of her form is ever strong in an anchored resolve. She has never been weak. But the thought seems to beg contradiction when his calloused, crime laden finger tips first dig prison bars into her shoulders -- and she quivers. Still, she has never been weak, not when her quivers wrack her like the earth is pulling at the plates of her body, grating in the crust grind of her teeth; not when her tears are untouched and dammed behind her fury. Her static, stasis stagnant ferocity. 

"I'm here."

His voice is bladed, yet not against her. A brogue rumble that unsheathed the slice of his tongue in defence. 

He peels the leather from her first. 

Gentle. Gentle. Gentle. He tries to be gentle (it does not come easy to him). His hands are more used to gripping blades, his fingers more familiar with digging into the pointed X of jugulars and pleas. All his cuts are clean. (But for her he will differ. For her he will dirty himself. It's a different sort of purity here, with her, atop blood mapped bathroom tiles and beneath the density of her shadow.)

"I've got it."

She sways like a tide, foreboding a storm. Silent and turbulent in the face of a disastrous mission when her shirt slips from her. She helps him hook her knee through the confines of clinging pants, digs her feet from the mud beds of her boots, toes stuck in grave prints. 

His hands rest on her shoulders and he tips her back into him, lets the sure rise of his chest steady hers as he holds her right (holds her HIGH.)

{ I've got you. }

She is soothed into the tiles, washed down by the pat of shower beads. Levi is next to her, fully clothed, soaked beneath the spray as he lathers her in suds and softness and simmers her life back to the burn. 

The water leaves her wounds translucent & he bites back the beginnings of a snarky, well meant comment, keeps his tongue dimmed for her. There is a time and a place. This is not it. This cannot be it. 

So he tries to fix her, tries to piece her back together like a child would a doll. Only he is too clumsy and he lacks the words she needs and she is so much more than the flesh and blood that makes her. 

Each stitch threads a repetitive, unspoken phrase into her skin, scars endearments along the flesh as he closes each wound beneath the pinch of his attention. 

I love you. I love you. I love you.

He double stitches. 

& He thinks she smiles when his hand rests beside her neck, thumb running like absent water along the fault lines of her pulse. His tongue unsheaths itself along the clamor of his bite. She stands firm. She has never done otherwise. 

"Shut it."

"Didn't say anything."

"You didn't need to."

\---- Her laugh settles, heavy in his lap. 


End file.
